Slashdot Mirror
Could Twitter Have Stopped the Media's Rush To War In Iraq Ten Years Ago?
Hugh Pickens writes "On the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Eric Boehlert writes that if Twitter had been around during the winter of 2002-2003, it could have provided a forum for critics to badger Beltway media insiders who abdicated their role as journalists and fell in line behind the Bush White House's march to war. 'Twitter could have helped puncture the Beltway media bubble by providing news consumers with direct access to confront journalists during the run-up to the war,' writes Boehlert. 'And the pass-around nature of Twitter could have rescued forgotten or buried news stories and commentaries that ran against the let's-go-to-war narrative that engulfed so much of the mainstream press.' For example, imagine how Twitter could have been used in real time on February 5, 2003, when Secretary of State Colin Powell made his infamous attack-Iraq presentation to the United Nations. At the time, Beltway pundits positively swooned over Powell's air-tight case for war. 'But Twitter could have swarmed journalists with instant analysis about the obvious shortcoming. That kind of accurate, instant analysis of Powell's presentation was posted on blogs but ignored by a mainstream media enthralled by the White House's march to war.' Ten years ago, Twitter could have also performed the task of making sure news stories that raised doubts about the war didn't fall through the cracks, as invariably happened back then. With swarms of users touting the reports, it would have been much more difficult for reporters and pundits to dismiss important events and findings. 'Ignoring Twitter, and specifically ignoring what people are saying about your work on Twitter, isn't really an option the way turning a blind eye to anti-war bloggers may have been ten years ago,' concludes Boehlert. 'In other words, Twitter could have been the megaphone — the media equalizer — that war critics lacked ten years ago."
NO, NO, NO.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I knew all this stuff at the time. From public radio and the web. The pro-war people I talked to didn't give a damn. Remember, the nation had 9/11 fever. It was unamerican not to give the president full support no matter how stupid his actions seemed. Twitter would have been full of that too.
Twitter, what can't it do? Surely somewhere in Twitter there is a time traveler that can go back and let 2003-era America know that they are about to make a huge mistake!
I mean, twitter is fucking awesome, right? It freed all those people in Africa, what's to stop it from just making a picture fucking perfect world out of this whole god forsaken planet?
Tell us, Hugh Pickens, what is next for our social media superhero?
Things little Twitter facilitate information and opinion exchange. Things people do naturally, and have always done essentially through talking. But Twitter (and the surrounding technology world) make it happen faster with wider reach. It allows the brain of humanity to become a little bit more "aware".
Nice idea, but the last ten years have shown us - around the world - that once the mainstream media have got hold of their story and their opinion nothing will change it.
It's a disappointing conclusion that the media have failed in their basic function, facts don't matter so much any more.
I know there is the occasional bit of naval gazing that goes on around here, but this is a bit more than usual. Besides if we are going to speculate about something we should go big. Had twitter been around in the 13th century the Mongol invasion could have been averted. Too bad about that...
I felt like I was reading the same thing over and over again. This summary could have been cut way shorter without losing any substance what-so-ever.
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
The Iraq war was not an unpopular idea at the time. It became unpopular in hindsight.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Given how the Government just steam rolled ahead on the flimsiest excuse from an unreliable source.
Then when they DID come in guns a blazin' they didn't have enough troops to deal with the aftermath of toppling a totalitarian regime.
So yeah, if you ever wondered why no one just stomps on NK the logistics involved aren't so much the initial war but the staggering aftermath.
They ignored us, and the facts, then. I'm sure they'd do it again, Twitter or not.
All smart people knew from the start that it was mostly bullshit. Twitter wouldn't have made a goddamn difference.
Caption: construe
There were a lot of warning signs that the Western press' support for the Arab Spring may have been a bad idea too, but Twitter certainly didn't stop that.
Your political party doesn't care about your rights and only represents corporate interests.
Twitter _might_ have spread that particular news enough to make a difference, but remember twitter isn't exactly discriminating when it "chooses" which messages to amplify. When the US sequestration happened were people focusing on Boehner's effective dismissal of the US Constitution? Or even just discussing the sequestration itself? Or were they busy tweeting about "Jedi mind melds"?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
The Bush Administration had decided even before getting their "evidence" that Iraq delenda est.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Dear USA, please don't rely on the magic powers of the WWW to fix your broken nation.
They ignored the facts, and the millions of us who shouted that they were lying, then. I'm sure they'd do it again, Twitter or no Twitter.
Look at all the info it provided about what happens when you do stuff without information (like a pass a bill on health care to know what's in it, that wouldn't raise anybody's insurance rates.)
It's a nice thought, but if the media is in the tank and has chosen sides, tweets aren't going to do anything.
the media doesn't do anything to police the inconsistences, untruths, or fabrications of current administration, why do you think it would have done it then?
At least if you're a corrupt politician buddying up who ever puts a few notes into your pockets for favorable invasions and occupations.
USA!
USA!
It's a blog post 140 characters at a time. Why 140 characters? Because Twitter is a relic dating back to a time when phones couldn't send messages any longer than that (thank you SMS, you reinvented the modern haiku). It's as unimportant now as it was when it was founded. The rise of Twitter mirrors the spread of the dread scourge of centralization that has taken hold as Software as a Service started to flourish: perhaps this newspost is what it will take for you to stop and re-examine how concentrated the providers of the Internet services you use every day have become.
The Internet could have helped stop the first Iraq War, but it wasn't available to the public at large at the time. They used their current mediums to promote, justify, and create the narrative they wanted you to hear. When the powers that be start the next war, they'll do the same. Embrace skepticism towards all forms of mass media.
"Consumers" don't give a shit about facts. Just ideology - us vs them - freedom vs tyranny - and other jingoistic nonsense that the politicians use to manipulate stupid people.
How to know if you're stupid?
If you blame conservatives or liberals or others for "our problems".
You are a stupid person. And I blame you.
Ooo the irony....
No!
Actually, many of the claims were debunked by the UN and others prior to Powell's speech (some in the same UN session, some earlier, some both), and had been covered extensively in the news pages of the major media. The "mainstream media" didn't ignore it, though the pro-war commentary in the major media did; the major media just separated the coverage of the "air-tight" case from the coverage of all the holes that had been drilled in it before it was even presented, which was conscious misrepresentation, not accidental ignorance that faster delivery could have addressed.
So, its unlikely Twitter would have changed things in a different way than the blogs did: the people that were paying attention to the sources which debunked Powell would, perhaps, have seen the debunking in a different format, but the people that didn't see it still wouldn't have seen it.
Last time I checked, Twitter was alive and well when our diplomats were murdered in Libya and when the government told gun dealers to purposely sell to straw purchasers for violent Mexican drug lords. It hasn't forced change in the Obama administration; why would anyone expect it would have worked for Bush's?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
So tell me, how has Twitter stopped the numerous stupid political decisions since 2006?
sudo make me a sandwich
Journalism died at least 5 years before the Iraq war. "News" media outlets are corporate/political megaphones, they are NOT the "4th estate" that keeps the checks and balances we hoped.
Look how the media was duped to demonize the United Nations during the entire Bush Presidency, even before the Iraq war. Long before we went to war, the UN's policies and internal politics were marginalized and they were made to look like a bunch of bumbling fools so when the Bush Admin got around to saying that Hans Blix didn't know what he was talking about, we idiotically believed it.
And "news" has gotten worse as time goes on. If you watch *any* of the corporate run media outlets, you're horribly mis-informed. Twitter isn't going to change that.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
it would probably be even worse. BS propaganda stories fly even FASTER since there isn't a mainstream media response to them. Do any of you get those bogus "conservative schools some maxism liberal" emails from friends? Most of them don't take more than a couple google searches to discredit timelines and quotes, but that doesn't stop them from spreading.
People are NOT more informed in the age of social media just as the flood of cable news outlets didn't lead to more high quality news coverage.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Treating_dissent_as_treason
In other news, telephones could have stopped people getting screwed over in trade deals in the middle ages, and kevlar body armor could have stopped cavemen from being eaten by bears.
Yes, modern technology could have drastically changed things had it been available sometime in the past, but this is a concept most people figured out when they were six. I know it's a meme here to rag on the submissions and editors, but seriously, why was this even posted? What's next, an article about water being wet? Is there no lower threshold for obviousness anymore?
Those pushing for war in the US ignored some of the largest protests ever assembled in human history in addition to ignoring the international community and reality. I think they would have also ignored tweets and retweets as well.
IIRC, polls showed around 90% of American supported the war on the eve of invasion. I recall an environment where objecting was widely seen as unpatriotic and cowardly -- the jingoism started after 9/11 and I never saw anything like it in our country; it was shocking and frightening. Twitter may have fanned the flames even higher.
Of course, I'm sure a poll today would show that only 10% remember being part of that 90%, and the rest will assure you that they would have protested loudly.
Or would it have had the opposite affect, with posts/reposts of the same copy and post mindlessness that engulfs every social site? I would like to think the speculations of "bringing out the truth" were the case, but I'm pessimistic.
All they had to do was point out how Emperor Bush had no clothes on, and how he was expecting us to believe in bullshit estimates of an occupation.
Going to war makes for some exciting news. But so does debunking senior officials. It's just a question of which one makes for better ratings.
Unlike the old SNL skit that asked "Would Napoleon have won Waterloo if he had a B-52 bomber?" the answer to this one is no. Twitter might affect a celebrity's behavior, but not a war machine.
Just the washing instructions on life's rich tapestry
And the assertions about "an absent media" don't match my recollections from that time (and I was paying very close attention to the run-up.) There certainly should have been more discussion of what happens after Saddam falls, but the current trope of a delinquent media is as much about current political posturing as it is about an evaluation of what was known -at that time-.
Public Radio ran a piece today pointing out that apparently part of Saddam's focus was not on preventing/reacting to a US invasion, but rather deceiving the Iranians to prevent their continued attacks. Even from a long distance during the invasion, I remember hearing reports that any credible intelligence analyst/knowledgeable news reporter would have evaluated as potential signs of chemical warfare preparations (specifically, finding open bags for chem suites. They're sealed, once you open them the activated charcoal, etc, degrades.) Turns out the Iraqi forces were wearing chem suits for warmth, but we had no way of knowing that until after enough POW interrogations had occurred to establish the pattern.
though its fun and all to blame Bush for Iraq, all you have to do is look back a year or so before he got into office and see that Clinton, Albright, Kerry, Berger, Pelosi and more were pounding those drums as well...
"As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, California), Statement on US Led Military Strike Against Iraq, December 16, 1998
"In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more the very kind of threat Iraq poses now -- a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the United Nations Security Council and clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program." President Clinton, Address to Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pentagon staff. February 17, 1998
"The hard fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region, the security of the world. The best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government -- a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people." President Clinton, Oval Office Address to the American People, December 16, 1998
"Imagine the consequences if Saddam fails to comply and we fail to act. Saddam will be emboldened, believing the international community has lost its will. He will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. And some day, some way, I am certain, he will use that arsenal again, as he has ten times since 1983." Sandy Berger, President Clinton's National Security Advisor, Town Hall Meeting on Iraq at Ohio State University, February 18, 1998
"No one has done what Saddam Hussein has done, or is thinking of doing. He is producing weapons of mass destruction, and he is qualitatively and quantitatively different from other dictators." Madeleine Albright, President Clinton's Secretary of State, Town Hall Meeting on Iraq at Ohio State University, February 18, 1998
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I recall large congregations of antiwar marchers in several countries, almost entirely ignored by mainstream media at the time.
Why would Twitter have any more potent effect, if the mainstream media demonstrated their willingness to bend/ignore reality?
Your vote is supposed to be the powerful message, and the political leaders bear greater responsibility in the tragedy. Yet America re-elected GWB after the war began, and nearly elected his cabal again recently. Politicians do what you let them. It is not the media's fault, it is the voters and uncritical audiences. Major news networks have regurgitated the government falsehoods, yet you still tune them in, while PBS cuts later were able to be relatively viable campaign platform. Stop trying to pin it all on the media, and look within.
The motto of CIA's National Clandestine Service is the Latin "Veritatem Cognoscere": Know the truth. It's no wonder that so many believe the function of intelligence services is to discover the "truth".
Mark Lowenthal, former CIA Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production, spent some time in his book "Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy", now the gold standard for undergraduate and graduate intelligence texts, explaining that intelligence is not about truth at all, but rather about arriving at some informed conclusion about reality, or possible future realities, neither of which can be considered strictly to be "truth".
"Intelligence is not about truth. If something were known to be true, states would not need intelligence agencies to collect the information or analyze it. Truth is such an absolute term that it sets a standard that intelligence rarely would be able to achieve. It is better - and more accurate - to think of intelligence as proximate reality. Intelligence agencies face issues or questions and do their best to arrive at a firm understanding of what is going on. They can rarely be assured that even their best and most considered analysis is true. Their goals are intelligence products that are reliable, unbiased, and honest (that is, free from politicization). These are all laudable goals, yet they are still different from truth."
Perhaps the biggest issue with "truth" in intelligence work is the absolute nature of "truth". If it is an analyst's job to find the "truth", then any deviation from that analysis by actual events means that the analysis was a "lie".
"Is intelligence truth-telling? One of the common descriptions of intelligence is that it is the job of 'telling truth to power'. (This sounds fairly noble, although it is important to recall that court jesters once had the same function.) Intelligence, however, is not about truth. (If something is known to be true then we do not need intelligence services to find it out.) Yet the image persists and carries with it some important ethical implications. If truth were the objective of intelligence, does that raise the stakes for analysis? [...] A problem with setting truth as a goal is that it has a relentless quality. [...if] an analyst's goal is to tell the truth - especially to those in power who might not want to hear it - then there is no room for compromise, no possible admission of alternative views."
This creates an environment where success is impossible, because discovering "truth" by every measure is a standard that can never be reached. It also discourages differing analytic viewpoints, each of which may be equally valid. Ultimately, someone needs to look at the available information and make a decision:
"[T]he role of intelligence is not to tell the truth but to provide informed analysis to policy makers to aid their decision making."
Synthesizing information into some measure of "truth" needs to consider all of the above. What, then, happened to the "truth" in the case of this famous so-called "intelligence failure", that of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction? The intelligence components of the US, Russia, France, Germany, and the UN as a whole believed Iraq to be in continuing possession of WMD, not to mention that Iraq was in material breach of no less than three binding and in-force UNSEC resolutions (the only kind of UN resolution with the "teeth" to compel member nations to use force to ensure compliance, unlike oft-cited General Assembly resolutions regarding Israel); witness this exchange on NBC's Meet the Press in 2004:
"MR. RUSSERT: When you look at the CIA information on the weapons of mass destruction, former President Clinton said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, as well as current President Bush. The U.N. inspectors. The Russian, French and German intelligence agencies said he had weapons of mass destruction. What happened? How could there have been such a colossal intelligence failure?
SECRETARY POWELL: Well, maybe because what we were al
Over a million people took to the streets of London to protest against the Iraq War. It still went ahead. Britain still got involved.
I was one of the idiots that believed that there were WMD and that the politicians knew more than we did (national security and all that). But I was young and naive. I was also stupid enough to believe that we were going there as Liberators, not Occupiers, and then I was shocked to see the way we (the Coalition) treated the Iraqis.
I am also disgusted at the mess we've left the country in. There is rampant sectarian violence, suicide bombings and Islamofascism. It makes the Northern Ireland Troubles look like a village fete.
Stick Men
Radar could have prevented the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor!
Applying 10 years hindsight on how people should have been enlightened enough to use Twitter to stop the US going to war is wrong. Remember at the time most of the US was screaming for payback and Iraq was the obvious scapegoat for the 9/11 attacks.
Chances are Twitter would have only solidified public opinion to go to war quicker as any anti-war sentiment at the time would have been slammed out of existence as being unpatriotic.
Also its not like there were no social networking outlets available for public opinion. Slashdot did exist back then too.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
And according to Wikileaks, the US Army was finding small caches of WMD right up until they left, albeit not the massive program posited as the cause for war. (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/wikileaks-show-wmd-hunt-continued-in-iraq-with-surprising-results/)
If even UNSCOM/UNMOVIC didn't know for sure if there were still proscribed chemical precursors of WMD in Iraq at the open of the Iraq war or not, and if there are small remnants of some kind of WMD program being unearthed almost to this day, in what sense were the media delinquent for not reporting the non-existence of WMD in Iraq? I think like everyone else at the time, they honestly didn't know, and they didn't want to go out on a limb and be wrong later. That's not quite a "rush to war" on the part of the media.
Bush of course had no problem going out on a limb. A lot of people were supportive because they were no longer willing to live with the same risks post 9/11 that they uneasily lived with pre 9/11, and then walked it back when no WMD were found. Other people were egging Bush out onto the limb because they were actively sawing it off. Such is politics.
And the media continues to spread disinformation to advance its own pet causes. The United States has continued nation building, and has even started NEW wars (and proxy wars) since twitter came of age. It wasn't twitter that had to go to the floor of the house and demand that the President of the USA declare he doesn't have the right to kill us in our sleep! I agree it's an interesting tool for the spreading of links and content, and with more information it seems that people /should/ be more informed, it's just the reality of today doesn't seem to reflect that at all.
To quote the cliche: The Revolution will not be televised (or tweeted, probably).
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
Has Twitter Bursted the Obama Media Bubble? No the lapdog media still goes along with every lie the He and the democraps spew.
Social media is for sucks!
They could have stopped it, but they deliberately chose not to. Those bastards.
Ah, I kid I kid.. I just wanted to be the first person that said yes after 67 comments of NO. Slashdot is united in opinion for the first time ever! I doubt it would have made a difference
You know what would have been nice though? If twitter had been around for a couple of years before that, and it had today's popularity back in 2003. I saw somewhere earlier in this thread that claimed 90% of America was in support of the war at the time. That seems a bit high, but regardless of what that number is, I'll bet most of them are silent now. It would be nice to know which politicians, celebrities, friends & neighbors were fully supporting war back then. So when the next middle east war "opportunity" rolls around and the same people shout "We want war! But this one's legitimate this time we swear, not like Iraq", their twit / blog / wall post history can be used against them.
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
Hi,
if there's enough political will, you'll allways shut off your brain and ask questions later.
Sad but true. And applies to gun laws and usage, also.
See how Obama's shiny new gun law is vanishing?
Twitter to the RESCUE!
Cheers.
as opposed to all of the 'journalists' who routinely disseminate left wing propaganda as news? you know, in order to 'make a difference'? Today, for every fox/orly there are 20/50/100 dan rathers. Why do research and honest investigative journalism when it's easier to just read the copy you've been given and relegate your 'investigation' to a more ideologically pleasing, 'fair and balanced', politically correct sandbox?
maybe the OP is right: the media does have a lot to answer for its part in creating today's state of affairs in this country. everthing is slick, whitewashed, censored, and PC, in order to maximize appeal to easily kneejerked soccer moms and aging christians...all with microsecond attention spans.
I spent extraordinary amount of time on various sites..... not just /., /. is not a forum that can pin a discussion and keep at it for months. There were plenty of those at the time, I was absolutely overwhelmed by people who were pro-war, pro-invasion, pro-military action, completely out of their mind yelling that Saddam was the devil himself and he caused 9/11 and probably fucked their grandmother (and her cat) while gradpa wasn't watching.
Actually I think some were so weird, they nearly referred to the Southpark (the movie, uncut etc.), because it had Saddam and the Devil in it at the same time, that was pretty freaking weird.
Basically there was story after story after story and after story completely swamping, overwhelming every freaking site and forum about how absolutely necessary it is to attack Iraq.
I couldn't believe what was happening, it was like a fucking nightmare. The sort that reminds you of the original Elm street movie, where you are walking the stairs and are just getting sucked into the carpet, can't move, the house is collapsing around you. That's what was happening.
You absolutely could add Twitter and every bit of technology you wanted to this mix and it would only AMPLIFY the crazy.
And the crazy were talking about how Saddam attacked USA on 9/11! I mean they could add how Saddam attacked USA on 9/12 and burned the white house in 1812. It was un-fucking-believable. They were absolutely sure that Saddam had every weapon in his disposal, it doesn't matter if I was pointing out before the invasion that if Saddam HAD anything, USA would have NOT attacked him!
Already in the first days of the invasion I was writing that if I were him, I would have used every single bit of every type of WMD against every American (and some of his internal enemies) immediately, in the first minutes or hours of that attack.
No, the crazy became only more and more vocal and actually cheering and jubilant as the war progressed.
I think that the live TV coverage that everybody was involved in actually helped USA pro-invasion propaganda. Also I remember how surreal it was to watch a real war on TV, not in real life. In real life it's different, you are there and you only see a little bit of what surrounds YOU. But when you see it on TV from many crews and many angles, it's so strange, like a surreal movie, that's not really happening. Similar to the weird feeling I remember having when watching the actual attack on 9/11 in real time (I was in a TV channel station, it was on the same floor as my contract at the time and they were getting a live feed) and the twin towers collapsing. It was a weird moment to watch, unbelievable almost, the entire war was like that, only stretched into weeks of that live coverage.
You could turn on the TV and watch live war at any moment in time. No Twitter, no anything could stop that.
The people's common sense was completely turned off. Anybody suggesting that the war was the wrong thing to do was almost attacked (or attacked for real). The answer to the question mark in the story headline is no.
You can't handle the truth.
Obligatory Twitter joke:
Twitter is a way to toss one liners to large numbers of people simultaneously in the digital age.
"Tweets" are what those short messages are called.
"Twats" are what those who post using Twitter are called. (Alternatively- "Twits")
In reality- stupid story.
The information WAS all out there.
Anyone and everyone who wanted the information had it, even before Twitter.
The problem was that most americans did not WANT the information- they wanted to pound their chests and talk tough out of revenge, and go to war with someone. And the mentally deficient W. was happy to find a way to embroil us in an unjustified conflict which has killed more Americans than the terrorist attacks which gave Bush the excuse he was looking for.
Seriously- Twitter is NOT without value but 99% of what is on their is just bs.
Is there an example of any U.S. government propaganda coming out, and Twitter ju-jitsuing it so that the media focus then become entirely the opposite? At any time? Because this is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence, whereas I'm seeing zero evidence.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
There are a lot of missteps that can be directly attributed to Bush.
Bush lied to the world. Days before Iraq was invaded Bush promised on national television to give the UN inspectors time to do the job.
Bush did not listen to advice. He dismissed all of the generals who told him he was running the war and the subsequent occupation wrong.
Bush was irresponsible. He never put the post-war occupation on the budget.
Bush intended to invaded Iraq before 9/11 because of an assassination attempt on his father. WMD and the connection to Al Qaeda were just an excuse.
It was the decision of George W. Bush to invade Iraq. George W. Bush had ultimate authority in conducting the war, and the subsequent occupation. It was his responsibility and his decision. It was the fault good or bad of George W. Bush. The buck stops with the president.
Glad we could clear that up for you.
The answer is No.
By the same logic, Twitter should have stopped your idiot Obama from being re-elected. That didn't happen.
we didn't have twitter back then, so the whole question is moot. Why dwell on what could of been and how about we focus on what is currently happening?
Be seeing you...
If the United States had withdrew from Iraq after the transitional parliament was elected in Jan 2005, except for maybe a few thousand guarding Parliament, America would be better off. Iraq, maybe not, but I am an American, and I don't care about the well being of Iraq. Iraq could choose to be a clusterfuck, or a Constitutional Republic. I don't care which.
Why would "journalists" be able to ignore blogs but not twitter? Journalists even now can choose not to have a twitter account and ignore twitter just fine. Aside form this, journalists aren't supposed to be weather vanes, they are supposed to be journalists. They should be investigating claims made by spokespeople and questioning them without the public forcing them to.
I think this idea that twitter could have caused journalists to question the rush to war is completely the wrong way to look at the situation. The right way to look at it is this:"
Twitter could have maybe exposed to the voters the fact that people in the MSM are not journalists at all, but merely unwitting cogs in a propaganda machine. I am assuming most of the self serving politicians that voted for the war would have thought twice had their jobs been on the line.
The goal shouldn't be to make the MSM better through social media. The goal should be making the MSM obselete by using social media to help people realize that there are more and better sources of "news" than traditional television channels and news programs.
While I loathe the idea that many people might choose one channel of information over another based on whether it can be consumed from the couch rather than a desk, it won't matter because soon general purpose computers attached to televisions providing content rather than simple cable boxes will be ubiquitous.
I marched in Orange County, CA just before the Iraq War started. There were at least 100,000 people on Jamboree Blvd. I was there. I saw them. Now, Orange County is one of the most conservative regions of California. It produced Richard Nixon, and usually has Republican representatives. So the fact so many citizens would leave work to march against a coming war was incredible to me.
That night I watched the news. Nothing. Not a single thing. Probably the biggest civil political protest in Orange County history and it wasn't on the news (at least that I saw). It should have been ALL OVER the news.
That's when I knew this "liberal media" was not true. It's really "corporatist media" and because the media in general decided for whatever reason to support the war they ignored the fact that an unprecedented number of regular citizens were against it. I learned a lot about how the world works that day. I really don't think Twitter would have made a difference.
Look at Iran. Perhaps it needs a little more government propaganda, but propaganda still is powerful.
Privacy is terrorism.
What's scary is how the average man on the street can be so easily swayed to murder his fellow man. I remember watching the main stream media is disbelief, it was a virtual nonstop propaganda show to go to war. No one was questioning the legality or morality of killing Iraqies, if you even dared, you were labeled unpatriotic and pro terrorist. It basically shattered any ideas I had that America was fundamentally a positive force in the world. The Bushes are basically a crime family (similar to the mafia), they had a beef with Sadam (a rival family boss) and ordered a hit on him, unfortunately many innocent civilians died in the process. This does not just apply to the US or Republicans, MOST so called leaders leave a bad taste in my mouth... I wish there was a provision in the constitution that stated, if you start a war you and your family have to join the grunts on the ground to fight that war...
After all, Twitter has done such a great job providing a forum for critics to badger Beltway media insiders who abdicated their role as journalists and fell in line behind the Obama White House's march to ongoing destruction of privacy, human rights, fill-in-the-blank. 'Twitter could have helped puncture the Beltway media bubble.
Bullshit.
Not one lie presented by Powell at the UN had not previously been disproved. Powell's circus performance was for betas, not alphas who had bothered to track Tony Blair's post 9/11 plans. The mass media is designed to manipulate the opinions of betas. The truth could not matter less.
Only one force on Earth could have prevented the US holocaust in Iraq, and that was Russia. However, Putin was/is Blair's main partner, and Putin had agreed to enable the UN resolutions that Tony Blair would use to justify the invasion.
For you braindead betas that congratulate yourself for only knowing about the world through the lies told to you by the mainstream media, let be point something out. Saddam was America's 'boy'. He waged genocidal war against Iran purely because America demanded this in revenge for the revolution depicted in that putrid garbage 'Argo'. He rolled into Kuwait on the direct say-so of the US State Department. After seeing Iraq destroyed during the First Gulf War, Saddam went on to do everything the American's demanded of him, assuming Iraq would be rehabilitated after a few years. Getting Iraq's oil was simply a matter of offering a deal to Saddam- any deal.
So, the USA could have had a strong ally in Iraq, cheap oil, and a Middle-east nation dead-set against 'Islamic extremism' all by simply striking a deal with Saddam. Instead, you betas are told it made far more sense to spend trillions of dollars (and lives of uniformed American butchers you racists probably care about) in a massive never-ending war. Can one of you betas explain how this ever even began to make sense to you, given the world view your propaganda masters work so hard to instill into you?
And yet years later you braindead betas cheered the holocaust of secular, West friendly Libya (now an extremist hell-hole), are are cheering the current holocaust of secular, West friendly Syria. Honestly, I'd love to know how you possibly manage to square these endless circles. I can understand how propaganda controls the weak mind, but not when the logic is so clearly insane, even to the stupidest beta.
"Blogs had this information, but they were ignored" ... "if only we had twitter! they would've known!"
Where the fuck is the logic connecting these 2 statements?
captcha: dictator
yes. twitter could have absolutely stopped the war from happening.
bio->bi_end_io(bio, error);
Neither could Iraq. The only difference was that there was a country so big and powerful that it made no difference. We imposed our will on them in the oldest, most vile manner possible: By murderous force, without any right, on a sovereign country.
By every measure, the 2nd Iraq war was unjustified, the consequences horrific, the perpetrators criminal, and by that, I don't mean the pawns, the soldiers, but those who steered this ship of terror, Bush and Cheney and every minion they had that participated in the faking of intelligence and the misdirecting of the public as to any involvement whatsoever with 9/11.
But overlaying all of this is the simple truth that collectively: we cannot trust our government, we cannot control our government, and we do not care enough to do anything about it.
This has been true for some time, from things we allow it to do to us, from the war on drugs to the fear-mongering used to crush our liberties subsequent to 9/11, to the completely unjustified actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The 9/11 perpetrators were mostly Saudi with 2...3 from Egypt, Lebanon and the UAE. No one from Afghanistan, no one from Iraq. The justification that they went to school in Iraq kind of skips over the idea that more of them went to school in the UK and Saudi Arabia. The idea that OBL was hiding there so we had to destroy an entire country to get at him was both wrong, and not really justified by the fact that he was pleased, but surprised, to hear that we had been attacked. The fact that we shot him when we had overwhelming force on our side and didn't bring him to any witness stand is, at least, suspicious.
Do I claim to know what happened? No. But I will say this: if you step back from the official story, the first thing you note is that this puzzle fits together really, really badly if you use the lines drawn by the US government. It's likely, IMHO, to be close to the real truth -- the best and most enduring lies usually are -- but it clearly isn't the truth. We know of many problems: There were no aluminum rods being used for centrifuges. There were no WMDs. Neither country -- Iraq or Afghanistan -- had much, if anything, to do with our being attacked. Saddam had, in fact, given us access to every site of any consequence. Almost everything Bush and Cheney said was distorted or outright false. Both undertakings failed to even vaguely resemble the minimalist interventions we were sold.
The lesson is that the government has control of the picture they present, and that we will, no matter if the consequence is our liberties at home or the lives of others across the sea, accept that picture and back them in almost any action.
I prefer the explanation that begins with what the Gaussian lays at my feet: More than half the people are really, really stupid. All of the people are subject to heavy attempts at deception to get them to comply. Even very smart people will fall prey to this until they obtain data that comes from sources that are not mangling it to fit a false picture.
I don't think we can fix this. Under the present model, our congress and judiciary are wholly bought and paid for, entrenched in a way that the public really doesn't understand through political leadership that transcends elections and lobbyists that exert the will of a privileged few who are subject to zero oversight by the public.
As to Twitter, Twitter is a form of the voice of the public, but it's really no different in its reach than the voices of big forums (and search engines) ten years ago, and there were plenty of those, including this one. Twitter is different in that 140 characters isn't enough to make a case for anything; I refer you to this very post: You may completely disagree with me, and if you do, likely you'll couch that disagreement in the form of a claim that I haven't made my case, even though I took the time to cite quite a few facts which you can easily confirm supporting it. Imagine if I had tried to use twitter to make the same case -- would
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
but anyone with half a brain should have known, that yes, back before gulf1, iraq did have wmds, but since decimating their military, not so much. that, and using terrorists like chalabi as your intermediaries was just asking for trouble.
Although done a lot in the past (no less to democratically elected) - you imply that replacing leaders of foreign countries with more favourable ones to the USA is still good in this day and age?...
Saddam himself believed he had WMD, or else why would he have played a shell game with UN inspectors? Iraq was also regularly firing anti aircraft missiles at the fighters enforcing the no-fly zones left over from the first Iraq war.
I'm more upset about the poor execution of the war. We went in without an exit plan. Then, when Iran (predictably) got involved, we never did anything about it.
You oppose the war only because your religious leader tells you it costs money. Why exactly you care about the US budget, when you don't live in the US, is a mystery. You have no moral objections to the war because you have no morals to begin with. Don't put yourself on a moral pedestal, you don't deserve it. If Iraq was instead invaded by Coca-Cola with an army of conscripted employees who were told to go to Iraq or lose their job, you would have applauded it.
When none of us believes what people we disagree with say, some idealized notion that unicorn farts (or web sites) will save the world is naive. It's like thinking the "Arab Spring" was going to do anything other than manipulate young idealist Muslim moderates to help replace middle-eastern dictators who'd become tolerable to the west (and were therefore being propped-up) with Muslim Brotherhood monsters who wanted to have one election to "legitimize" their rise to power before turning the calendar back to the year 700.
We have a severe partisan divide that started in the sixties as the left began to separate itself from the things all Americans used to have a common belief in (and which had, therefore, provided common points of reference for all political dialog). By 2000, the left believed in no fixed law, a "living Constitution", "Social Justice" etc which leads to them ignoring laws and precedents and claiming (and in many cases actually believing) that the Supreme Court "stole" the election for Bush from Gore. The reality is that the very same court made plenty of rulings conservatives hated and if you study the precedents already on the books the justices had little choice.
In our now hyper-partisan world, the press (which has aligned itself with the left) refuses to hold democrats accountable for anything (for example most outlets ignored the Obama admin transfer of thousands of "assault weapons" to mexican drug gangs and the thousands of resulting deaths, Obama's unconsitutional appointments to the NLRB (ruled as such by the courts) repeated violations of the budget laws, etc) and relentlessly attacks the right. Left-leaners believe those press outlets and think that they are getting honest news there, and right-leaners ignore them and see their lies and distortions. On the web, left-leaners believe left-sites and do not believe right-sites.... and right-leaners believe right-sites while not believing left-sites
The left has so hyper-politicized this war with lies that it's impossible to have a frank, calm discussion of the subject between people on both sides. Bush never lied during the lead-up to the war (he did not say in his speech that Saddam had or was working on WMDs... that's a lie the left started using against Bush to paint him as a liar (as part of an organized pre-2004 election strategy when his popularity was very high) ... what he actually said was actually true: that we had reports from our allies that Saddam was again pursuing WMDs... this was true). Now, anybody who gets their news from organizations supporting Obama (Comedy Central, NBC, MSNBC, HuffPo, etc) refuses to face reality and simply recites the mantra "Bush Lied! Bush Lied!"... it's impossible to have a dialog with people who have such 6-year-old mentalities.
I wonder how much of the news and comments was more or less direct propaganda work by USA and Israel. And attacking Iraq, had been the plan of Project for the New American Century for several years. Something similar seems to be happening to Iran at the moment.
In fact, weapons of mass destruction were discovered in Iraq.
The problem arises in definitions, what people believe to be the truth, and politics.
I asked a lawyer once what the legal definition of the truth was, and he quickly responded "the truth is what a preponderance of people believe to be true, at that time"
Nobody can claims Saddam Hussein never had WMD's. Clearly he had them, and used them against the Iranian's, and the Kurds. The question is did he have them after that time period, leading up to the invasion of iraq. The answer is yes. There were modest amounts of chemical nerve agents weaponized, that were found in Iraq. This is also NOT DISPUTED.
So now you get down to what people believe. Do you believe the modest amount was sufficient to justfy the war....that's an opinion of course.
Reality: we've been moving towards an nastier society for some time. Americans wanted a war, against a largely hapless target. And the people who pimped for the war are still grinding out column inches. Twitter can't even get rid of the zombies of Iraq, let alone stop the war itself.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
There were also a lot of commercial interest with USA at stake, hence it is not that clear that french diplomatic position was leaded by oil interests. Former french president Jacques Chirac wrote in a book that he was subjected to an intense lobbying effort against the french position on Iraq war. Most industries wanted him to side with USA.
Moreover you have to consider relative oil importance in France, given that most of electricity is produced by nuclear plants. France could probably do a war for uranium (and perhaps this is the reason for France being in Mali right now), but not sure it would for oil at the moment.
I marched in London, and it was incredible - it virtually brought the city - one of the largest in the world - to a standstill. Unlike in the US, we did get reasonable media coverage, of the distinctly British, unbiased, non-partisan sort. Yes it made not one iota of difference. The government barely acknowledged the march, and certainly didn't change its mind. We still have no idea what the fuck Blair was thinking, unless it was one of his divine revelations.
I believe that event was a major reason why people became extremely disengaged from politics and still are. That's why we have such a crap government in power in the UK, because nobody can be bothered to vote, as they know that democracy is a sham, thanks to Iraq.
Some people these days blame the German people for the Second World War, despite the fact that Hitler never had anywhere close to a majority of popular support. It's because he ran roughshod over the democratic process, just as Blair and Bush did, and people were not roused enough to care until it was far too late. We need to be very careful that history doesn't repeat itself.
The presence of Twitter would not have made a difference for at least two major reasons:
1. People were too afraid to vehemently question the administration's decision. Sure some people took to the streets, but anyone with enough power to expose the fraudulence of the war were too afraid to do so. And who could blame them? Who would dare challenge an administration that claimed that anyone who is not with them is against them? And especially after they had been given unprecedented powers to spy on their own citizens, put them into prison without a trial, and use torture against them. After that chain of events, it was the first time I had ever experienced a genuine fear of my own government and the need to keep a low profile. Any comments I made against the war were posted anonymously and were worded to be sure that they couldn't possibly be construed as a threat. And even the most liberal news media outlets didn't dare expose the extent that the "evidence" of WMDs was a complete farce. So the presence of Twitter would not have had any real affect if they people were too afraid to call out the administration for their exaggeration of the situation.
2. The administration had already decided that they were going to Iraq. The President gave speeches very frequently and it was clear that he was not going to give up. We were going and it was just a matter of convincing enough of the undecided people and wearing down the resolve of the dissenters. This was done by speeches that promised new information, but contained no actual details. Instead, they were filled with rhetoric and the strategic and repeated use of the words "Bin Laden", "al Queda", "Saddam", and "terrorism" in close proximity of each other in an attempt to get people to link Saddam with 9/11. And it worked too: surveys showed that over time more people began to believe that Saddam had some responsibility for 9/11 despite the fact that evidence of such a link never existed.
Going to Iraq was inevitable given the cast of characters and their motivations. Bush wanted to finish what his father started. In addition to that, he and Cheney wanted to secure oil for all of their buddies in the oil business. There were a number of security companies with close ties to Rice and Cheney that would be able to get lucrative contracts for private security. Rumsfeld was a notorious war hawk who was a member of an organization called Project for a New American Century that had been pushing to go back to Iraq since Clinton was in office. Many other members of Bush's administration were also a part of that organization which advocated using our military to "promote American global leadership" in an atmosphere akin to a modern global Manifest Destiny. And we haven't even begun to talk about how Saddam had converted all oil transactions from U.S. dollars to Euros, thus weakening the dollar. The list goes on and on, but the point is that we were going to Iraq as soon as that administration took office and the presence of all of the social media web sites in the world would not have stopped them.
I believed the adminstration's story 10 years ago. But six weeks after the invasion began, I knew I had been lied to. The great shame is that we (the US voters) voted in 2004 to let Bush stay in office after it was clear even to fools (like me) that what you accuse him of was true.
No, the twitter echo chamber would have resonated the delusion and the polarization.
As a young french man I remember the psychosis going on in the US after 9/11, I remember the speech of our prime minister at the time http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/French_address_on_Iraq_at_the_UN_Security_Council
Your leader polarized the world and your people http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You're_either_with_us,_or_against_us
It was not about terrorism, wmd or taking down a dictator. It was simply about oil but many of you already knew that at the time.
From a recent CNN article: "Before the 2003 invasion, Iraq's domestic oil industry was fully nationalized and closed to Western oil companies. A decade of war later, it is largely privatized and utterly dominated by foreign firms.
From ExxonMobil and Chevron to BP and Shell, the West's largest oil companies have set up shop in Iraq. So have a slew of American oil service companies, including Halliburton, the Texas-based firm Dick Cheney ran before becoming George W. Bush's running mate in 2000.
The war is the one and only reason for this long sought and newly acquired access."
"Of course it's about oil; we can't really deny that," said Gen. John Abizaid, former head of U.S. Central Command and Military Operations in Iraq, in 2007. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan agreed, writing in his memoir, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Then-Sen. and now Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the same in 2007: "People say we're not fighting for oil. Of course we are."
I moved to the US in 2005 and some years later in 2008 I asked a US coworker "I've heard that these wars are for oil, have you heard anything like that ? Do you agree ?" and she categorically said no. Other coworkers from a younger generation were not that delusional. Still people don't talk about it, which is sad because it's the same people that vote. Some people think they know what they side with but they are completely disconnected from reality. They follow blindly what they believe. And they would follow the same thing on twitter.
George Bush and his stooges very much indicated that the Iraq "problem" was part and parcel of our "war on terror." There is no question whatsoever that he linked the one to the other, and expected us to accept that. To claim otherwise is both revisionist and deceptive.
Those are not WMD's in the sense that the US had any reason to be concerned with them, hence are completely irrelevant as justification for our declaring war on Iraq. The question is, was Iraq going to deliver these things to us, did they pose, in any way, a credible threat to the United States of America? The answer is not only "no", but "Fuck no." No delivery system, no demonstrated intent to deliver, no sane survival strategy post having delivered, complete inability to achieve any kind of meaningful military success no matter how much of that crap he collected, stated policy of the USA to respond to WMD use with our own WMDs, which aren't chemical and aren't survivable, and would turn Iraq or whatever target we should choose into Allah's own glowing skating rink.
The Kurd issue was an internal Iraqi problem, just as Waco and Ruby Ridge and Kent State and the Chicago riots and the assault on US WWI soldiers in Washington by MacArthur and the internment of Japanese in WWII and the Montana "Freemen" and the current assault by the government on our constitutional rights -- and many other injustices -- were and remain internal US problems.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Just a couple of days ago the U.S. president said that Iran will have nuclear weapons within a year. I think that is a bullsh*t claim, altough I'm swedish, so I'm too far from both countries to really judge the legitimacy of it all. I believe however, that the march to war on Iran has begun, because that's what the military industrial complex needs to keep the money flowing.
The media was full of small, planted stories before (both) the Iraq war(s). This warmongering will be no different. The iraqi wars took place, however, before the coming of Twitter and Facebook. The spreading of both disinformation and actual information from grassroots and government megaphones alike is more rapid than ever before in the history of mankind. Even if the intertubes are full of desinformation and war thugs, this might be a key difference.
I just hope that the truthsayers win when it comes to Iran. Not that I approve of Ahmed Ahmadinejad or the religious-political leadership in Iran, but think that a revolution coming from within is more efficient than one that is started from an aggressive invasion.
The propaganda has already begun for a war on Iran. It will be more aggressive in the near future.
i remember when the iranian youth were protesting, protesters were on twitter, green color, was showing they supported the protest, i remember a free tool provided by a few, which was entitle to make your account green, and to install it, open access to all your private data. I warned people it could help some to know who were the protesters, and a few second, minutes after was a rush of comments, which gave me the impression, i was on the right track, and for some it could be necessary to quickly hide my comment. Not to mention how many young people been arrested by the time :( But for sure, despise those you oppose, and you just lost the first battle :(.. wish you all, all the best, thanks for reading me, and i hope you don't mind much, my poor english.
The original point was, would twitter have been a check against the media? I think we can clearly see that even with twitter the media has lost it's way. It no longer reports the news, now all it's interested in are ratings. It convicts people without a trial or even proof. The media has clearly chosen sides in politics. To be fair all of the media didn't pick the same side, but even that could be a calculated risk. If different branches of the media come down on opposing sides that causes controversy and increases the ratings for the shows. They even get to spend some time bashing the other shows for their views and lack of "journalistic ethics". Watch the movie "Idiocracy" and be very scared.
This is such a bad case of wishful thinking it borders on Dunning Kruger example.
The reality is even afterwards with full knowledge that the WMD case was wrong it's taken years to get to the bottom of why.
Ah, historical memory is so conveniently short.
I'd like to review this on multiple levels: first, the simplest, legal level.
The ceasefire at the end of the 1993 Gulf War had a number of terms that Saddam routinely and casually violated. This ALONE legally justifies any US resumption of combat operations.
Second, Saddam was our tool, and thus our problem 'to fix'. From a Cold War era where finding proxies to fight on 'our side' was more important than considering they were brutal sociopaths, he'd also proved useful to us in countering Iranian regional power in the 1980s. To ignore that he was our creature is almost as bad as ignoring the routine brutalities he exercised against his own peoples - to fault both Conservatives and Liberals on this issue, respectively.
Thirdly, and I think most important, were the geopolitical realities. By the time of the 2nd Gulf War, there was widespread clamor from the Left to end the 'cruel' sanctions that 'were only hurting schoolchildren'. Nobody seems to remember this? (And this setting aside the regular and systemic violations of the sanctions that were taking place by European firms in probable collusion with some governments.) Saddam was politically isolated, he was a pariah, his military was decrepit. We had (criminally, in my view) allowed him to crush his opposition in the southern Marshes over the 1990s without objecting. It was a perfect opportunity to get rid of him, try to restore some American military credibility (badly soiled since Mogadishu), and likely to be limited in duration.
Not to mention, and this may be distressingly amoral/utilitarian for some, US casualties WERE LOW. 5000 dead, 50,000 injured isn't trivial by any measure, but for a war against a nation of 22 million and a 10-year resisted occupation, it's small. When your opponent is reduced to planting bombs in trash cans, you've essentially won.
Personally, I never gave a shit about the "WMD" or "Al Qaeda" stories, they were fairy-tale sound bites useful for convincing the naive and ignorant too stupid to understand the geopolitical rationale behind the US's actions in the Gulf.
Was the invasion botched? Yep. I think we went into it entirely undergunned even recalling that the main invasion force - 4ID - was blocked from planned deployment by last-minute Turkish qualms, and the invasion plan (originally planned to be a 'demonstration' in the south, with the real invasion coming from the undefended north through the sympathetic Kurdish regions) essentially completely reversed at the last moment. I'm not sure I understand the parsimony in deployments, unless there was a hope that - given the political and public antiwar repercussions that were growing - this could be as 'light' as an invasion could be. I think we underestimated Saddam, as well, which is always a tragically stupid thing to do.
But largely, nevertheless, it was a success. When Bush declared "mission accomplished" - it largely WAS. Saddam had been toppled, period, full stop.
Further, I think the occupation afterward was the catastrophe. Truth in advertising: I don't believe that the US is obligated in any way to rebuild countries that we attack and defeat. The logic BEHIND the Marshall plan is no more applicable universally than the implementation.
-Styopa
The internet had already done it's job. We can prove this by the fact that people were protesting before the Iraq war even began. Don't you remember the people blocking traffic in New York by laying in the roads?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War
The problem is that the banks, and the government and media outlets they own, decided beforehand what the "narrative" would be. The cooked a bunch of fake evidence about chemical/nucular (.... f'ing bush....) weapons. They had Colin Powell give some fake ass testimony about "mobile labs" that we sold them when we sold them all the other weapons years ago. They did everything but wave a dead fetus around for everyone to get angry at. The thing we need to do now is not make unnecessary arguments about a social service designed for 14 year old girls with short attention spans. We need to look at the historical evidence. Clearly see that the banks and there government lied us into yet another war..... Take a look at the Nixon article posted up the page... It clearly shows the mindset of power hungry politicians and how they're willing to throw other peoples children to the wolves for there selfish needs.
The office Sen. Jesse Helms (who is currently rotting in the ground), when he was in the Senate then, *said* that the thousands of snail mail letters coming to the officer were running 100-1 against starting the war - that's ONE HUNDRED TO ONE AGAINST, but he voted yes.
Just yesterday, "Amy Kremer, who helped found the Atlanta Tea Party and subsequently rose to leadership positions in the Tea Party Express.", was interviewed on TV, and asked whether the American people should have believe Bush, Cheney, et al, and she said they don't have enough information, and that that should belive the President.
So, no, tweets wouldn't have done it. They'd planned it years before - go to the Project for a New American Century website, and in their base documents is a letter written in 1998 or so, urging then-President Clinton to invade Iraq... signed by, among others, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz. Note that Cheney arguably committed treason by outing CIA agent Valerie Plame, and that some of the in-field people she was running vanished, presumably killed, becuase he wanted to discredit her husband's report on the falseness of the "yellow cake uranium" issue.
They p0wned you, America, and it's the land of the cowards and the owned (disagree? really? dealt with the TSA lately?)
mark
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Iraq is less free than ever. The jailing of dissidents and journalists continues just as it did under Saddam.
http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/01/22/iraq-intensifying-crackdown-free-speech-protests
You realize their university system is destroyed?
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/02/04/0414251/the-destruction-of-iraqs-once-great-universities
Core infrastructure is destroyed, and the west will be loathe to spend money on actually rebuilding it. Gender inequaity is worse than it was under Saddam.
As to the remark that they are "killing each other"--you realize no research was done beforehand into the sort of sectarian violence swapping the lead political religious sect would bring? You think that once peoples' livelihoods are destroyed, once they are threatened with starvation, any infighting afterwards is simple THEIR fault? See your home destroyed and then face starvation yourself--then see how you see how much you long to destroy yourself and your fellow man. This is akin to a white man watching slaves fighting and insisting their anger is merely towards each other.
You shouldn't post nonsense about Iraq when it's clear you've spent the last decade in a beltway media bubble (as has the fool you responded to).
A terrorist is a freedom fighter who isn't on your side.
Casteism
It would make no difference.
There are 5 people who own 95+% of the media in the USA. Once they are "okay" with something then there is no debate just endless justification and rationalization. The owners of the media don't care about doing good investigative journalism much less the truth anymore. Nope just endlessly calling people "cowards" and "unpatriotic" if they question any of the official line.
Twitter would censor anything they were told to and it is every bit as susceptible to manipulation as any other media.
Joseph Goebbels would be so proud of the media in the USA today.
1. There aren't a lot of smart people on Twitter to ask hard questions
2. Even if there were, it's very hard to carry any kind of intelligent discourse 140 characters at a time - it would have been used like an RSS feed to walls of text that either journalists would TL;DR at, or the public would TL;DR at the responses to.
3. Anything that doesn't make the mainstream news might as well have not happened. You know something that wouldn't make the mainstream news? Anything that can be ignored and stands a serious chance of derailing a war. War is as lucrative for the media as it is for the "defense" industry. They want that gravy train to leave the station, only afterwards can the debate over whether it should be rolling safely begin.
4. Too many Americans were still thirsty for brown people blood at the time and would not have any of your unpatriotic traitor-speak.
5. Even if the last 4 weren't problems, the Bush administration wouldn't give a damn what anyone had to say, the plans for the Iraq war were being made years in advance, it was about oil and would have happened within Bush's first term one way or another, and everything else was just an excuse or a half-assed attempt at post-hoc rationalization. I once saw a Slashdotter sum it up nicely: "One day Saddam said he would trade oil in Euros instead of USD, soon after, he was hiding in a hole in the ground while his country burned down around him."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That zombie was already shot in the head during the 2000 election, when the media spent months inventing Al Gore "exaggerations" but gave Bush a pass for taking credit for an HMO bill of rights that he actually vetoed as governor of Texas. In a presidential debate, no less.
What's the difference between someone convicted of threatening a president on Facebook and Lee Harvey Oswald?
Panorama has spoken to several intelligence officials as well as the US' main source, Curveball, who later admitted making up the mobile laboratory claims.
You will need a UK IP address to watch this.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01rh8hd/Panorama_The_Spies_Who_Fooled_the_World/